Senate passes $1.2 trillion government funding bill, sends to Biden | Wilnesh News

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted 74-24 early Saturday to pass a $1.2 trillion government funding bill after intense last-minute negotiations led to senators violating a midnight deadline to avert a government shutdown.

But the disruption to funding was brief, technical and had no meaningful impact as the White House said it had “ceased preparations for the shutdown” as the Senate reached a deal, which comes after Republicans called for a vote on a series of amendments. achieved later.

The legislation passed the House on Friday morning by a vote of 268 to 134 and now goes to President Joe Biden, who has said he will sign the bill into law. It caps off a tumultuous government financing process during a divided administration that included a year of haggling, six months of stop-gap measures and bitter partisan conflicts over funding and policy along the way.

Once Biden signs the plan into law, the entire government will be funded by the end of September, after Congress passed the previous $459 billion in funding earlier this month. The total expenditure level for this fiscal year is US$1.659 trillion.

“Nothing is going to be easy right now,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told NBC News as the Senate voted after midnight. But he said Congress would pass all 12 appropriations bills within a year. Significant.

“Given the dysfunction in the House and the slim majority here, there’s something to be said for the fact that we finally got this done,” Murphy said.

The new portion will fund the Departments of State, Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and other government agencies that are not yet fully funded.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, said it was “typical” and “childish” for the Senate to wait until the 11th hour to act on the bill.

Earlier on Friday, the Senate advanced the bill in a procedural vote of 78-18, saying there was enough support to push it through. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced ahead of the deadline that the two sides had reached an agreement to vote on multiple amendments before finally passing the bill early Saturday morning.

“It’s been a very long and difficult day, but we just made a deal to get the job done to fund the government,” Schumer announced on the Senate floor just before midnight. “It’s a good thing for the country that we have this bipartisan agreement.”

A divided Congress narrowly avoided multiple shutdowns this session, passing four stopgap bills that kept extending deadlines. Nearly six months into the financial year, it is unusually late to haggle over financing measures. The latest bill was released on Thursday and passed the House on Friday morning, leaving little time for the Senate to act.

For a time, it looked like those talks were breaking down at noon on Friday, with Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, arguing that the deal was being undermined by vulnerable Democrats in key Senate races and claiming they didn’t want to fight the deal. The vote could be used against them in their re-election campaign on amendments.

“The bottom line is that Democratic senators running for reelection are afraid to vote on the amendment,” Cotton told reporters. “Jon Tester said he would rather have the government vote on it,” Cotton told reporters, adding without providing evidence. Close and vote on Sunday night before voting on the amendments.” These amendments are for you. “

But Tester, a Democrat who has a tight re-election campaign in red state Montana that could decide the Senate majority, pushed back, telling NBC News, “That’s bullish…”

The feud came to a head when the two senators spoke to separate groups of reporters just feet away from each other in the Senate chamber.

“Did Cotton say they were keeping the amendment because of Jon Tester?” Tester yelled at Cotton during the exchange. “Because if he did, he might eat something that fell off the cow’s back.”

Senators are frustrated by the fact that Congress was able to avoid funding drains multiple times this fiscal year alone, but struggled to do so in the final fiscal year.

“It makes me sick,” Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in an interview. She added that she felt like “I ate too much sugar and bad pizza” after serving the items at a Senate Republican lunch.

“If we eat salmon, that’s what we think because it’s like we have all these good omega-3s,” she said. “We were like — we were a mess of candy pizza and we acted like teenage boys.”